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US manufacturers are discovering the policies of the Trump administration aren’t like a cafeteria. You don’t get choose which policies you want.

As OEMs and suppliers alike wrestle to convert Big Data to Smart Data, Industry 4.0 and digitalization, plus cloud-based technologies for production monitoring and management, how do manufacturers best work together with end-users to achieve today’s production targets and plan future facilities?

Automotive engineering has never had so much complexity to address. Producing millions of vehicles per year is a daunting feat.

Whether we’re talking about linear pallet systems, simple pallet changers, or robots, it’s clear there is a huge opportunity to automate US machining operations. While horizontal machines are automated more often than verticals, vertical machining centers are more prevalent than horizontals so the greatest untapped potential is in automating verticals.

Flexibility has come to automation, perhaps as never before. And for industries that require precision machining, assembly, and measurement, automation technologies have never been more available.

Ongoing exchange between CAD/CAM software technology developers and cutting tool manufacturers is an excellent illustration of how technology collaborations can create productivity gains in manufacturing. Several examples involve our company and cutting tool manufacturers.

DP Tool & Machine Inc. (Avon, NY) is a contract machine shop that benefits from a well-rounded array of advanced machining and manufacturing technologies. These include multitasking and five-axis machines as well as automation and some digital connectivity.

Spend enough time on shop floors and you’ll learn about the two different groups of skilled workers that reside there. On one side are the old-school machinists—skilled craftspeople who use their hands, eyes and ears to guide machine tools. On the other side are the programmers and engineers.

Additive manufacturing (AM) pioneer Charles Hull introduced the first commercial 3D printer, the SLA-1, in 1987. Jaws dropped, machinists wondered about their next career, pundits said it spelled the death of traditional manufacturing. None of that happened, thankfully; in fact, some said 3D printing was a bunch of hype, good for little more than investment casting patterns and proof of concept prototypes.

Manufacturers face the ongoing challenges of managing exponential product complexity, staying competitive, and avoiding disruption. For many of them that leads to the notion of digital transformation, but they are not always sure how to get started.